2025 MLB Home Run Derby: What happens when a homer is robbed? Junior Caminero found out in the final

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Junior Caminero was credited with 44 homers in the 2025 Home Run Derby. Not all of them crossed the fence. (Brett Davis-Imagn Images)
The kids who flood the outfield at MLB's Home Run Derby have one job and one job only: Catch the non-homers. One of them went a little too above and beyond on Monday.
In the final between Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh and Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Junior Caminero, the latter slugger hit what appeared to be his sixth homer of the timed portion, until someone with a glove jumped and hauled the ball in. It was unclear in the moment if the ball would have been a homer, but it clearly had potential.
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The umpires reviewed the play during Caminero's mid-round timeout and opted to give the 22-year-old Caminero the homer.
The play fortunately ended up not mattering. Caminero looked like he had a chance to catch Raleigh's 18 homers in the final, but he slowed down toward the end of the timed portion and added only one dinger in the bonus round, leaving him with 15 and making Raleigh the first catcher to win the event.
Had Caminero ended up at 18 or 19 homers, this could have been a very different story.
The Mariners took the whole thing with good humor.
That wasn't the only controversy involving Raleigh over the course of the night. He looked great in the final and semifinal, in which he beat Statcast monster Oneil Cruz, but the first round was a different story.
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Hitting seventh in an eight-player field, Raleigh posted 17 homers, putting him in a tie with Athletics designated hitter Brent Rooker for fourth place, in a round where only the top four sluggers advance. The final batter Matt Olson finished with only 15.
Normally, a tie in the first round is decided by which player hit the longest homer, but Raleigh and Rooker were both recorded as hitting a ball 471 feet. It looked like they would have to head to a swing-off, but then word came from, well, somewhere, and it was established that Raleigh's homer actually traveled 470.61 feet, while Rooker's went 470.53 feet, via Statcast.
It's not exactly the best look when someone in an office tells a national audience that one guy — who happens to be the event's marquee player — beat the other by a difference of literally an inch, but that's how Raleigh made it out of the first round alongside Caminero, Cruz and Byron Buxton.
Between the robbery, the review and a 513-foot tank from Cruz, it was an eventful Home Run Derby. And hopefully a lesson learned for a certain Atlanta youngster.